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VIDEO" New Pin Point Heritage Museum set to revive history in Savannah

STEVE BISSON/SAVANNAH MORNING NEWS Tania Smith-Jones, Site Administrator at the Pin Point Heritage Museum, stands in Oyster Factory where the seafood was processed.

STEVE BISSON/SAVANNAH MORNING NEWS The Oyster Factory at the Pin Point Heritage Museum.

STEVE BISSON/SAVANNAH MORNING NEWS The Company Store at the Pin Point Heritage Museum is where you'll find the gift shop

STEVE BISSON/SAVANNAH MORNING NEWS John Caramina, Director of Interpretive Programs at the Coastal Heritage Society, talks with Hanif Haynes, left, about how they'll interpret the bateau display at the Pin Point Heritage Museum.

The Pin Point Heritage Museum, a computer-savvy window into a seldom-told chapter of African-American history, will open to the public this weekend under the careful tutelage of the Coastal Heritage Society.

A lot of people know what happened during about slavery and Reconstruction, and what happened during the civil rights era, but they don’t know what happened in coastal African-American communities such as Pin Point in between those spans, said Sandra Baxter, chief operating officer of the CHS.

“This is a story that needs to be told,” she said.

New role for old site

Seamlessly melded into the once-dilapidated buildings of the long-closed A.S. Varn & Son Oyster Seafood factory, the museum has some 3,000 square feet of exhibition space. It will foster participation through interactive displays, entertain audiences with a Hollywood-caliber video, and register sales at a well-stocked gift shop.

But as visitors walk along the museum’s oyster-lined paths, they also will learn about individual Pin Point residents, such as John Henry Haynes. Better known to his neighbors as “Bacon,” Haynes loved Pin Point’s adjacent rivers and streams. After he died, said the plaque with his story, Haynes “asked that his casket be placed on this dock for a short time before the burial service — a final chance to be near the water that was so important to him.”

Such poignant episodes, and irreverent nicknames, are quite familiar to Tania Smith-Jones, the CHS’ site administrator for the museum. A Savannah native, Smith-Jones spent several summers as a teenager in Pin Point.

Personal connections

“My godmother grew up in Pin Point,” said Smith-Jones. “Maybe it’s fate that I have the opportunity to go back to a place that brought me so much joy as a child.”

The museum, at first, will be open only on Saturdays, and to reserved group tours.

Smith-Jones takes the responsibility for those visitors, and CHS’ relationship with Pin Point seriously.

“I’m honored” by the opportunity to help people learn about this area and its culture, she said. The people of Pin Point “are wonderful, and I look forward to our growing relationship.”

Another CHS employee who’ll be working at Pin Point, Hanif Haynes, also has deep ties to that community.

“I grew up here,” said Haynes, who added that his grandmother and mother worked at the Varn plant, which from the mid-1920s to the mid-1980s when it closed, was Pin Point’s primary employer.

“My mother, they said, was one of the fastest crab pickers in the factory,” Haynes said.

Lesson plans

John Caramia, the director of interpretative programs for the CHS, said he’s working to develop specific tours of the factory for the guided group tours, narratives that will consider and explain individual elements of Pin Point.

“How do you tell a fuller story? What themes do you emphasize? That’s what we’re trying to set up,” Caramia said. “The group tours will allow us to expand on topics.”

Once those tours are established, Caramia said, the next step will be to develop programs for school groups.

CHS is also looking at non-traditional avenues of story telling for this site. It is considering proposals to interpret Pin Point from Kofi Moyo, who operates By Water Tours, and Patt Gunn, who does story-telling and other programs through Geechee Girl Productions.

The heritage and history of Pinpoint are unique, and offer an opportunity, and a responsibility, Baxter said.

“We plan to learn the story of Pin Point, and then share it.”

Ties that bind

Settled in the 1890s by ex-slaves and their descendants, Pin Point has enduring ties to several adjacent African-American communities and sites, particularly Ossabaw Island.

Paul Pressly, program director of the Ossabaw Island Education Alliance and a recognized coastal Georgia historian, said, “The story of Pin Point is an American story about how a group of forced migrants arrived in British North America during the 1760s, and made their way across plantations, tenant farms and crab factories to embrace the American Dream.”

The Pin Point Heritage Museum, Pressly said, will explain and illustrate the nature of crabbing on Ossabaw Sound and will offer insight into a descendant community of people who worked the plantations on the barrier islands of this region.

The museum will become, he said, “one of the premier sites” on the Georgia coast “for understanding and appreciating the Gullah heritage.”

Choosing the proper shepherd

Emily Owens has been the spokesperson for Crow Holdings in Dallas, the firm behind the restoration of the old factory, since the project began in late 2010.

“We met with numerous organizations to find the right fit as a partner,” Owens said.

Eventually, she said, CHS was chosen, in part, because it already operates multiple facilities, including Old Fort Jackson, the Savannah Children’s Museum and the Georgia State Railroad Museum.

But, more importantly, she added, “CHS was founded to preserve and share coastal history. Our goals are the same.”

IF YOU GO

What: The Pin Point Heritage Museum

When: It will be open to the public from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdays, and to groups of 10 or more by reservation. At 11 a.m. Sept. 1, Isaac Martin will demonstrate how to make crab nets, and at 2 p.m., Patt Gunn of Geechee Girl Productions will perform.

Where: 9924 Pin Point Ave., just off Diamond Causeway

Cost: On Saturday, admission cost will be $7 per person. Group charges will vary according to size.

Info: chsgeorgia.org, 912-667-9176

PIN POINT TIMELINE

1880s to 1890s: Several hurricanes strike Ossabaw Island, and most of its African-American population decides to depart for the mainland. The Hinder Me Not congregation moves to Pin Point, where it establishes the Sweetfield of Eden Church. Its members, and other African-Americans, settle on land sold to them by Henry McAlpin.

1926: A.S. Varn Sr. opens the A.S. Varn & Son Oyster Seafood factory. It immediately becomes the prime source of income and employment in the community. Its canned oysters are sent to restaurants as far away as New York.

1929: After a hurricane wrecks the site, Varn rebuilds the plant.

1961: “Moon River,” the Johnny Mercer standard, which immortalizes the tidal river that flows in front of Pin Point, wins an Academy Award.

1966: A.S. Varn Sr. dies at Candler Hospital.

1971: A.S. Varn Jr. files a federal suit seeking to halt the use of mirex, a fire ant spray. The use of the insecticide, said Varn, is killing oysters and blue crabs.

1973: A.S. Varn Jr. files a suit in superior court seeking $50,000 in damages to his business caused by the Skidaway Island Bridge. Built in 1965-67, the bridge impedes the ebb and flow of Shipyard Creek, leading to a silt buildup that threatens the seafood plant, the suit alleges.

November 2010: Crow Holdings in Dallas, an investment firm, announces that it plans to restore the long-closed seafood factory and reopen it as a heritage museum in late 2011.

Nov. 20, 2011: The Georgia Historical Society and the Pin Point Community Betterment Association dedicate a historical maker at Sweetfield of Eden Baptist Church, and the Pin Point Heritage Museum holds its grand opening.

Sept. 1, 2012: Under the auspices of the Coastal Heritage Society, the Pin Point Heritage Museum officially opens to the public.